


Distance

by venom_for_free



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble, Established Relationship, Feels, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Light-Hearted, Love, M/M, One Shot, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venom_for_free/pseuds/venom_for_free
Summary: Distance, Yuri thinks as he closes the lid of his laptop, distance is a feeling. It's an emotion, measured not in meters or feet but heartbeats.--Or: Yuri reflects on the meaning of distance for his relationship
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38
Collections: Otayuri Week 2020





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Otayuri week! ♥

Distance, Yuri thinks as he closes the lid of his laptop, distance is a feeling. It's an emotion, measured not in meters or feet but heartbeats. 

When he's talking to Otabek, his heart is slamming against his rib cage, running a mile a minute, trying to break free from the boney confines that keep it in place. 

When he's not talking to Otabek, the world slows down. Yuri is counting seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months. 

Months. Sometimes it takes  _ months _ for them to meet again. But he doesn't feel distant. Because when he thinks about Otabek, his heart speeds up, nonetheless. 

Distance, Yuri thinks, is a feeling. Distance is when he doesn't have a morning coffee after sleeping for only three hours because he spent the entire night on Skype, and he feels like shit, but he did this to himself, so Yakov and Viktor punish him. Distance is the bruise on his skin when he tumbles and falls because he's thinking about brown hair in an undercut. 

It's not the sensation of being stretched, either on his fingers or Otabek's. It's not the smooth tugging of a comb running through his blond locks and the hand on the small of his back. 

Sometimes, when he can't have those things, he imagines them as hard as he can. Yuri tries to trap them in his head, together with warm memories and pleasant emotions, where no one and nothing can reach them because it's just him and his thoughts. 

There in his mind, Otabek is with him, holding him tight, keeping him warm, kissing the bruises that distance forced on him. 

Distance isn't about physical proximity. It doesn't have to be, not for Yuri. He can feel close to Otabek when his boyfriend tells him what to wear for the next day. He's close when he texts pictures of his food or videos of Potya. His heart picks up its unrelenting pace when Otabek shows him a motorcycle he dreams of having, plays him a new song, calls him a new nickname. 

The map on his phone doesn’t bind Yuri, home address ‘Saint Petersburg,’ but the route to ‘Almaty’ is always only one click away. Distance isn't 38 days on foot, 58 hours by car, 8 hours by airplane—or 11 or 20, because you never know what airline flies when and how the planes connect. 

Distance is an emotion, and Yuri refuses to allow it into his life. So he counts heartbeats instead of kilometers or feet. And he hopes there are a lot of them because his heart beats faster when Otabek is near. 

_ Near.  _

Being near to each other isn't about the next competition. It's not about the route between them. 

It's Otabek, sending him 

**_Good night, Yura. I love you._ **

**Author's Note:**

> > Thank you, as always, to my wonderful editor [Taedae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taedae/pseuds/Taedae), and to you as the reader.  
> I'm also on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/venom-for-free)[, Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/venom_for_free/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/venom_for_free)


End file.
